


unspeakable

by daxsymbiont



Category: Academia RPF, Unspeakable Conversations
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-13
Updated: 2015-04-13
Packaged: 2018-03-22 16:31:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3735838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daxsymbiont/pseuds/daxsymbiont
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>just a couple of hmj/singer fragments</p>
            </blockquote>





	unspeakable

**Author's Note:**

> Look, just read [Unspeakable Conversations](http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/16/magazine/unspeakable-conversations.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm) and then get back to me.

(i)

_Look,_ Harriet thinks to herself, _nothing can happen._ It’s a very reasonable statement and it has capital letters in all the right places. She’s a very reasonable woman. Enough people have told her that for her to accept it, wryly, with a quirk of the mouth that says: Maybe sometimes I’d rather not be.

Oh, sure, she makes a big stink about inaccessible buses and gets into political fights and raises Cain – how many metaphors for “stirring up trouble” can we stick in a sentence, huh, Harriet – but that, underneath, is all oh-so-terribly reasonable. It’s based on reasoned principles. Harriet knows what she’s doing; she can play feisty and mischievous as well as she can play docile.

Crip-of-all-trades.

Carmen’s playing chaperone, walking behind with what’s probably an ironic self-awareness of her supervisory role. _Don’t catch em making out behind the bushes._ Not that, well, not that they could really _get_ the power chair behind the bushes without some serious wrangling, she’s not sure Peter is prepared to spot her like that, and –

Stop thinking about it.

She wonders if Carmen notices the hand. She’s wondering about Carmen as a way to distract herself from how much she, Harriet, notices the hand. It’s Peter’s fingers lightly settled over her free wrist on the arm of the chair, and the nerves there are buzzing irregularly. Like she’s got a fistful of bees and then dunked them in a fizzy drink. Fizz on sputter on spark.

Peter’s talking same as always, low and even and ridiculous ideas, so cleanly laid out. But his hand is deceptively casual on hers and when she turns to him she can see the fear and the question hover plainly in his eyes. Well, it’s good to know they’re both of them afraid.

_I am not afraid,_ she tells herself.

And even if she is, God, Harriet, you’re afraid of all the wrong things – not of how he’ll shove you in the gas chamber first chance he gets ( _when are you going to wake up_ , Laura had said, their most recent phone call) ( _you know Harriet there were some very pleasant Nazis_ ) or how his words, eventually, will slither into your brain and burn all your hard-won self-confidence to a crisp. No: not that, but how his lips might feel on yours, how his hands are soft and rough at the same time and how ridiculously genteel he is, as he speaks of terrible things – it’s so incongruous she wants to laugh and back him up against a wall (you can do that in a chair) to startle him stutter him wink at him and bend his cool unwavering ideology

until it breaks.

_And then, Peter, you can break mine._

All’s fair, after all, in philosophy and law.

If she sobs once or twice, to herself in the night – if it doesn’t sound nearly so poetic and witty when she’s alone not _lonely_ but struck once again by the depth of respect in his eyes – then Harriet will weather it, she won’t succumb to shame.

Buck up. Tell the story as it’s meant to be told.

 

(ii)

We’ve both mostly sobered, Peter and I, and I am uncomfortable with the charge between us sans the moderating influence of the alcohol. It feels like we’re about to break out into another argument, but I know that’s not the case.   
  
He takes my chin between thumb and forefinger, not a grip but a touch, layered over the familiar position of my own hand. He is so unfortunately sincere, this man. He believes what he says, and that is my downfall.   
  
What once seemed to me like a condescending smirk has begun to look like a smile.   
  
His mouth nearly engulfs mine, and I don’t mind. I kiss back as best I can, teeth scraping against his lips, but mostly there is a necessary passivity that I have learned over the years I cannot exhibit. It is a luxury. This is luxurious: I am not in an institution, my life is not in immediate danger, I can afford to debate with a man who questions the worth of my existence. The thought opens up in me a gaping maw of guilt that’s hovered beneath the surface this entire evening.   
  
We’re still kissing, taking short breaks to breathe. A warmth spreads through me, slowly, more than can be ascribed to the alcohol – and it’s horrific, that this is happening, this in response to him. I wonder if he thinks the same of me. We are both mistakes, each the implacable demon of the other’s life.   
  
“Stop,” he says abruptly, as if to himself. I draw back a centimeter; he pulls away, sits straight on the edge of the couch and folds his hands in front of him.  
  
“Harriet,” he says. “That was untoward. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have – ”   
  
I want to laugh. “You were the one who told me to stop,” I point out. I for one want his mouth back. An old fear unravels within me like a snake, but I choose to ignore it. My voice isn’t shaking, which pleases me. The Southern drawl, however, might be just a bit out of control.  
  
“True,” he says, and shakes his head side to side. Peter Singer appears nonplussed. I really would laugh if I weren’t so terrified. This is my fault, isn’t it. Somehow I’ve improperly jumped a philosopher, despite being the one unable to jump.   
  
“I mean – ” he starts, his gaze fixed on the far wall. “I blame myself. But this is inappropriate.”  
  
Why’s that, Peter? I know it’s not the standard reasons, and that’s what kills me. It’s not: you’re a child, you’re too fragile, you disgust me, you are a concept mutually exclusive with kissing. It’s something almost entirely reasonable.   
  
“I know,” I say quietly. “Rather tragic, isn’t it.”  
  
He laughs, barely. His hand reaches out and twines two fingers through mine. The size difference is comical, the mobility gap more so. I shut that thought out.   
  
“I imagine this is more of an ethical breach for you than for me,” he muses. Still not facing me.   
  
“Well,” I say, moved by a sudden and painful empathy for him, for what he must be telling himself right now. Philosophers and lawyers are the two groups most equipped with the means for rampant rationalization. I’ll be doing the same later, Peter. “Most of my friends already considered talking to you the ultimate betrayal,” I say. “I doubt they could even conceive of this.”  
  
He smiles. His profile was eloquent in bewilderment and is now aptly softened. (Eloquent? I berate myself: I who so value speech, particularly in the context of this delicate partnership, using that word about a face. But I can’t deny that it fits.)  
  
“I doubt my colleagues and admirers could conceive of this either,” he says.   
  
My colleagues and admirers. I would mock him, but he’s merely describing reality.  
  
“So you consider me neither a colleague nor an admirer?” I joke instead. I don’t know how that slipped out. It’s closer to flirtation than any other statement I’ve made tonight.   
  
He turns in a rustle of clothing and suddenly his head is buried in the free side of my neck. God. God that neither of us believe in. Get it together, Harriet. His hands have come to rest on my shoulders, featherlight yet with the faintest hint of pressure. I can sense the hesitation in his fingertips: he’s afraid I will break, still more afraid to insinuate that in any way for fear of offending me. Is this okay, but is it okay to ask if this is okay?   
  
“It’s fine,” I say. My hand is at his waist, and I trail my fingers over his sweater, wanting to reassure him through active touch. He breathes in deeply against my clavicle. In this position his head contributes to propping me up, since my support arm has long since fallen. This strikes me as either maudlin or demeaning, reversing half the work I’ve done; as his hands relax on my shoulders I think I’ll take maudlin.   
  
He kisses my neck. I didn’t expect that. There is a sound in the back of my throat, daring to escape.

 

(iii)

Picture: a noted disability rights lawyer and a eugenicist philosopher are seated wistfully at their respective computers. Separated by several states and clashing ideologies, wishing they had the courage to overcome their reservations and just fall into each other’s lives for good, sparring joyfully into contented old age, to the bewilderment of everyone around them –

But no, the guilt is too strong, old habits die hard; Harriet has a reputation to uphold and her dignity to salvage, and Peter fears the way his heart beats jittery against his chest contrary to his philosophy. They’re furtive and ashamed, and while you can sure as hell get off on that, it’s nothing to build a life on. and so they’re confined to the occasional tryst in a hotel room, on neutral territory, while Harriet’s aide leans her head against the wall in the next room and pretends she doesn’t hear anything.

It’s never really enough. More satisfying and more painful are the quiet nods at academic conferences, the brush of hands that lingers beyond social protocol. He kisses her once, in an emptied lecture hall. She hates him for it. But she knows the way she looks at him, like she’d strip him of his skin and eat him (whole, raw) without ever harming him in the process, is just as deserving of hate.

So there’s that. And between, in the long stretches of time that waste between each face-to-face meeting, there are only the e-mails. Restrained, formal, their words breathing heat into frost on the computer screen. Like a heart drawn on a window that shortly fades. Dear Harriet. Dear Peter. They compose carefully, their knuckles tight over keyboards. They don’t let anyone know. Behind every learned, polished syllable lurks the deep rumble of a volcano. Chunks of rock and magma hit them no matter where they stand.


End file.
